Local firefighters and police officers spent nearly 2½ hours rescuing three hikers who got lost while hiking in the Lower Paugussett State Forest on Labor Day. Two men and one female were rescued from the forest. One of the men was taken to the hospital.a federal holiday that provided anything but rest for many of the town's first responders. A motor vehicle accident involving a Shiners vehicle that occurred during the Labor Day Parade late Monday morning resulted in Hook & Ladder and Sandy Hook being dispatched to that incident; Sandy Hook Fire & Rescue later responded to two separate motor vehicle accidents with injuries on Berkshire Road that afternoon; and Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps responded to ten calls on on Monday alone, beginning with a call at 11:50 am and concluding with the lost hikers call that evening.

Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue and Newtown Police responded to a call for help around 8:30 Monday night. The first responders were initially dispatched to the end of Great Quarter Road, where a trial head is located and where the hikers had reportedly entered the forest.

Sandy Hook Fire & Rescue Chief Bill Halstead had command during the incident.

At least two DEEP officers also responded to the scene.

Using GPS coordinates that Newtown dispatchers had picked up from one of the phones of the hikers, firefighters were able to better identity the location of the trio. The coordinates put the group in the southern section of the state forest, approximately 2,700 feet, or just over a half-mile, from the easternmost end of Paugussett Road.

One Sandy Hook truck went to the initial dispatch location, but all others went to Paugussett Road.

"We staged at the very end of Paugussett, near Forest View Drive," Chief Halstead said Tuesday, September 5. "Everyone went in from there," he said of the first responders who were on the scene. Twenty firefighters responded to the call, he said.

Firefighters headed northeast in hoping to intersect with the lost trio.

Once the firefighters made contact with the hikers, however, it was learned that one, a 24-year-old male, was unresponsive but breathing. This necessitated the use of a second group of firefighters, who headed in to the woods with a quad and trailer that would be used to transport the patient.

"The terrain, and getting out there, and obviously being at night" provided challenges for the rescuers, said Chief Halstead, who said he believes the other two hikers were also in their mid-20s. All three are local residents, he said.

"I don't know the length of time they were out there," he said of the group. "They had just decided to go for a walk."

The ailing hiker reportedly lost consciousness "several times," according to Chief Halstead, while being evacuated from the forest. The other two were able to walk on their own.

A Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps crew and on-call paramedic were dispatched once contact was made between firefighters and the hikers. Firefighters had been following a trail that took them in a southern direction while leaving the forest. After initially staging on Paugussett Road, the EMS team was redirected to Stone Bridge Trail shortly before 10:30 Monday evening.

The northern end of Stone Bridge, a dead end road off Berkshire Road, is approximately two-thirds of a mile south of the lowest property line of the state forest.

Contact was made between firefighters and the ambulance crew around 10:40 pm. NVAC transported the ailing hiker to a hospital shortly before 11 pm. The other two were checked at the scene, but did not required additional medical help.

The call for the lost hikers was the cap on